


Truths In Ink

by spoke



Category: Ronin Warriors AKA Yoroiden Samurai Troopers
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:28:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>First of all, a huge thanks goes to ilyena-sylph for being my last-minute beta and reassurance that it was good; I had convinced myself it was awful by the time it was ready for beta'ing.<br/>Secondly, I have no idea what else to say here, except the idea came to me, to begin with, as: Ryo would look cute with fangs.<br/>I never even thought he was attractive before this! XD</p>
    </blockquote>





	Truths In Ink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pentapus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/gifts).



> First of all, a huge thanks goes to ilyena-sylph for being my last-minute beta and reassurance that it was good; I had convinced myself it was awful by the time it was ready for beta'ing.  
> Secondly, I have no idea what else to say here, except the idea came to me, to begin with, as: Ryo would look cute with fangs.  
> I never even thought he was attractive before this! XD

 

 

Page after page of translation slid by, until the words blurred and her eyes ran off the paper into the shelves rising around the desk like walls. Sitting with them between her and the rest of the house, she often felt walled off from the place. She hadn't expected to still feel so out of place a month after arriving.

Burying her head in her hands, she wondered if it would be worth trying to stay up further. She didn't want to lose the thread of understanding that had gotten her this far, but it wouldn't do her any good if she lost consciousness instead. Still she managed a few more yawning lines until nearly tipping over the ink bottle convinced her to stop. Destroying all this work in an accident would leave her too angry tomorrow to focus properly. So she folded away her notes and capped the ink, leaving everything neatly arranged on the desk for the morning. She paused on her way out to pick up a book to read herself to sleep by before leaving the library for her usual trek through the empty halls.

The normal hush of the house was always magnified in the dying light. It was hard to remember ever seeing anyone else in the place, with the evening coming on. No matter how often she told herself that was silly, it was hard to believe when she thought of the young man who had introduced himself only as Cye; she had felt so alone after he'd shown her around that evening, she might as well have been escorting herself. It was stranger for the fact that he had been perfectly welcoming, with the sort of friendliness that made him pleasant to recall. It should have been comforting to think that he was here.

It should _not_ cause her to pause in doorways and around corners because she felt slightly nervous at the thought of meeting him again. 

Everywhere the colors were subdued, and the deep red of certain paintings was the only color that retained any of the beauty it held during the day. Passing from carpet to bare floor, her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in her ears, and she was constantly aware of the rustling of her dress. It was a relief to reach the safety of her rooms, and she refused to ruin that by acknowledging how relative such safety might be.

As she settled in for the evening, she peeked outside the curtains. There was supposed to be a full moon tonight, always her favorite light for reading by since she was a little girl. She opened up the curtains, just in case it came up before she had drifted off, and settled in to read.

The last thing she was sure of was fumbling for the bedside lamp and staring at the moon through blurred eyes.

* * *

She woke in a dull shock, fighting sleep only because she was sure she had heard someone in the room. She slapped on the lamp, and peered around in the painful brightness. The light revealed no one, so she stumbled out of bed to check the other rooms.

Nowhere was anyone visible, but she felt the distinct impression that someone _was_ there, all the same. "Hello?" she asked, only feeling a little foolish. It was one thing to dismiss the emptiness of the house in the daylight, and another to be up at night with this feeling in the room and the whispers of the local villagers in her head. No one lived in the house, and what was there only came out at night. No one lived in the house, and people who went in were never seen again. "If there's anyone there, you can talk to me."

The presence sharpened into a feeling that wasn't quite contempt before vanishing. Now that she was utterly alone in the room she noticed how cold it was, and turned to see a window left open to the night air. She checked what she could see of the garden for any sign of her intruder before she closed it.

When she returned to her bedroom, she saw that the book was still lying open to the last words she'd read. She sat on the edge of the bed, trying to regain some sense of composure, and found herself staring at the illustration next to the old fashioned printing. The background was a tall waterfall with a building sitting on its distant peak. There were trees here and there, in twisted cloud shapes that suggested a constant tugging wind. But what had caught and now kept her attention was the woman standing in the foreground, wearing a dress like nothing she'd ever seen before. It was slender and wrapped around her body, and there was surely as much material in the sleeves as there was in the rest of the dress. Even stranger were the weapons she was holding, a pair of swords with thin sharp blades and curving hilts. She stared at the viewer with eyes that conveyed some terrible distance between herself and whatever she was thinking of. It was impressive how well the artist had captured the expression.

The expression. An expression, the words that had been tugging at her as she fell asleep... she turned her attention back to the text. She'd been called here to puzzle a location out of an historical text, but the words she'd struggled to translate all day were right here in front of her in the text of a book of fairy tales.

"Her people left for the land beyond the mountains..."

"They are said to have gone beyond the mountains in Shir'evan, and were never seen again."

She was up and getting dressed before she'd even realized it, her mind buzzing with the implications as the missing link to her understanding finally fell into place.

* * *

The library was empty when she made it back, and despite her concern she'd been alone in the halls. She'd seen people moving, certainly, glimpses around corners and through half open doors - but no one had been walking the halls, and no one seemed to have noticed her doing so. All her work was still sitting where it had been, as usual, though she had expected it to have been moved or damaged after the non-encounter in her room.

It was strange how much larger the place seemed in the moonlight. When she went to look for the shelf she thought had held the book of fairytales, she couldn't find it. Preoccupied with wandering down the aisles in her search, it took her a moment to notice that she had company, a presence that felt similar to the earlier one, but not as hostile. Having been ignored in her earlier attempts to communicate, she decided to let this one make its own choice, and kept on looking - but she was no longer as comforted by the library as she had been. She was shivering as she reached up for the next book and gave a muffled shriek as someone reached over her head to give it to her.

"You're the researcher Ryo sent for, aren't you?"

She turned, hoping she didn't look as foolish as she felt. She was suddenly aware that she hadn't really been paying attention when she was grabbing things out of the closet after she decided she wouldn't be able to sleep anymore. The young man standing in front of her didn't seem to notice her embarrassment, or he was ignoring it, either of which she was happy to settle for. "You're a little bit lost, huh?"

"Yes. I was trying to find the shelf where I'd found this," she held up the book as if it were permission to be wandering about the library, as if she hadn't been hired to do exactly that, "but I'm not seeing it anywhere."

"That wasn't supposed to be out here." Frowning, he took it and flipped it open to the page she'd marked. He was dressed in soft brown, a perfectly ordinary shirt and slacks. Then she wondered what she had been expecting that she would even notice it. He looked up again, an urgency in his eyes that wasn't there before. Her suspicion that he'd read the note she'd marked her place with was confirmed as he whispered, "You really think so?"

"Well, yes. It's right there, isn't it?" She indicated the book he was still holding. "But I need to know more, like where she's supposed to have come from, and-" she paused, staring at his eyes and wishing it was daylight. She'd have liked to be able to really see his expression for this.

She'd have liked to have a weapon or some plan of escape for this, since she suspected it might be the stupidest thing she'd ever done. She could just hear her parents' yelling, or Grandfather's silent disapproval, which was worse. "I'd like to know how it is that you became trapped here, and what you are exactly. Not to mention why you couldn't find your way home yourself."

From the expression on his face, she might as well have had a weapon.

A new voice laughed somewhere overhead. "Wow. You really _are_ as smart as they said." Almost as soon as she'd looked up, he was in front of her, making her jump for the third time that night. He only laughed again when she scowled, holding up his hands in a placating manner. "Okay, hello. My name is Ryo. This is Rowen." He tapped his friend's shoulder, and was glared at for his trouble.

She smiled. "I'm Mia Koji."

"And, we can't find our way home because we can't find her." He tapped the book in Rowen's hands, and Rowen responded by pulling it away. "As for what we are..."

The awkward expression that passed between the two of them might have been endearing if she hadn't been so worried. "I may need to know if I'm going to figure out the rest of it."

Rowen had been watching Ryo, then he turned to her. "Look, lady. We're lost. We just want to get home. After that, it won't matter what we are, right? We'll be gone."

"And if I do need to know?"

"Then we'll tell you."

She frowned as they started to walk away. If they thought she would be dropping this that easily, they'd have a surprise coming to them. She hadn't ignored all her family's warnings not to come here with the intention of leaving as ignorant as she'd arrived.

* * *

The room they finally led her to was hidden further in the library, and that itself turned out to be larger than she had realized. Everything they thought she'd need had been moved close to the desk they'd given her, and since she thought it was she needed, she'd been resisting the temptation to explore. She just assumed the place ended a few shelves beyond her work space.

The house had to be larger than she'd realized to have room for those shelves. It made her wonder what would have happened if she'd ever dared to go exploring.

They ended up in a circular room lined with a few small bookshelves and numerous maps laid out on a central table. What caught her attention, though, was the long painting occupying pride of place between the shelves. In it a white haired man knelt, stretching out a hand towards a kind of cat she had never seen the like of before. His clothes were oddly layered, and the background of the picture...

The background was a building standing beside the top of a waterfall. It looked very much like the one seen in the distance behind the young woman in the fairytale book that Rowen was putting back on a shelf to her right. She walked closer, noting vaguely that Ryo followed her and that the thick carpet made her footsteps nearly as soundless as theirs. Getting closer confirmed her first impression, that there were angular symbols falling through the mists of the waterfall that might be mere decoration, though she thought they were more likely writing.

"But what does it mean?" she whispered, reaching out a hand.

"Don't touch that!" a new voice interrupted, and she turned to see a young man in a smart green jacket and dark slacks. Just looking at him gave her the same disdained feeling that had woken her up at the beginning of this nighttime excursion.

"And you are?" she replied, putting as much contempt into it as she could manage. It might be a mistake, but it was worth it to see the one visible eye widen.

Rowen looked over, and smirked behind the newcomer's back. "Hey Sage. This is Mia Koji, that researcher Ryo asked to come here to help us?"

"Sure, but what is she doing in here?" He asked, glaring in a way that made it clear he had no intention of dropping his hostility.

"Helping us?" Ryo answered, and there was something about him that made Sage back down a little. Taking Mia's arm, he walked her past Sage and over to the map-strewn desk. "So this is about where we thought we should be looking. Only, every time we head out there to check, we come up with nothing. Obviously."

She looked them over, finally picking up the one that looked most likely. "This one is close, but it doesn't look quite right." She nodded towards the desk without taking her eyes off the map, and hardly noticed that Ryo and Rowen were clearing things off of it as Sage walked around to help them.

She _did_ notice that he was still eying her warily.

* * *

At some point during the night Sage left, and earned a glare in passing as he announced that he was 'hunting'. She was perfectly aware that it was meant to provoke her, but she didn't have time for him. Besides, it was slightly satisfying to see him angry over it. Rowen followed him after half an hour, and he didn't say anything about where he was going.

She wasn't sure if that was worse or not.

She started to nod off over the revised and annotated map before Ryo noticed, and gently pulled it away from her. "Hey, you might want to get some sleep now. I didn't mean to keep you up or anything."

"No, I'm fine." she insisted, but he pulled the map further away and gave her an amused look that had her blushing without being quite sure why.

"Mia? Seriously, it's almost morning. We'll be going to sleep soon. You can't just keep going without rest, come on."

She stood, and the dizziness it brought on forced her to admit that he had a point. He walked her to the door of the room, and opened it only to call out to someone outside. "Kento? Hey, Kento, I know you're out there!"

"Man," a new voice complained. "Why're you picking on me?"

"Because you've been out to eat and I haven't." Ryo grinned, and she swore she saw a hint of fangs. But she'd already suspected that, and she was too tired to care anymore.

"Whatever." Kento replied, and a surprisingly large shadow detached itself from the shelves in front of them. "Go on, get out of here. I'll make sure little miss nosy doesn't get lost or anything."

"Thanks, Kento." He went past them, and it was only by comparing the two of them that Mia realized Ryo looked as bad as she felt.

They both waited until he had gone out of sight before turning to each other. What Mia expected to consist of awkward pauses instead turned into a blur of chatter that she only wished she'd be able to remember in the morning. Kento was incredibly talkative compared to the others, waving his arms around and laughing at her feeble jokes. It was like she had imagined having an older brother would be.

She stumbled into bed after he left, feeling for the first time that she might to feel at home here eventually. 

 


End file.
